Good morrow Lords,
So Julia has me thinking....
I always thought that the great thing about podcasts was that, like radio or music, they can be a totally interesting backing track to an otherwise boring task (driving, cleaning, running pointlessly on the spot in a gym somewhere), but I never really thought about the podcast simpliciter. I never really thought about how you might enjoy a podcast, if you weren't actually doing anything else.
Our meetings have been pretty persistently throwing out the idea that the popularity of podcasts must have something to do with their portability - that the 'listen anywhere, anyhow, anytime' quality of podcasts is an integral element to their success. Julia has made a massively important point here!! Some people will simply be listening to The Podcastle while sitting at their desktops, or laptops, or staring blankly at their smart phones. I've had a hunt around the internet and come up with a few super clever ideas podcasters have used to add some pazazz! (I apologize for my use of pazazz)
Animation:
I've seen a bucket-load of examples on YouTube of producer and fan animated podcasts. The Ricky Gervais Show is an awesome example of this. Started off as an audio only podcast, and then was animated for HBO in the States and Channel 4 in the UK.
I've seen a similar thing done with clips of Hollywood Babble-On (Kevin Smith and Ralph Garman's celeb news /Liam Neeson dick jokes podcast) on YouTube. I'm not sure if this was animated in house, or if it's just incredibly elaborate fan-art.
Unless one of the lords, is actually the defrosted Walt Disney, I'm not sure animating the cast is going to be possible, but I've seen a whole bunch of other (probably simpler) visual techniques.
Vidcast:
According to my gamer brother Day[9] is some kind of pro-gamer demi-god with whole lot of Korean fans... obvisously he's tapped a niche market, that's probably not going to be ours, but his podcast is super visual. That's because it's actually a vidcast. There's no fancy camera work, editing or set he just films himself talking into his computer.
Picture Time:
So it's pretty low tech, but there is also the option of adding still images to our podcast and uploading it onto YouTube. Rob (you know, the one with the podcast) has a pretty good, if woefully uninteresting example of this.
Comment away Lords.
So Julia has me thinking....
I always thought that the great thing about podcasts was that, like radio or music, they can be a totally interesting backing track to an otherwise boring task (driving, cleaning, running pointlessly on the spot in a gym somewhere), but I never really thought about the podcast simpliciter. I never really thought about how you might enjoy a podcast, if you weren't actually doing anything else.
Our meetings have been pretty persistently throwing out the idea that the popularity of podcasts must have something to do with their portability - that the 'listen anywhere, anyhow, anytime' quality of podcasts is an integral element to their success. Julia has made a massively important point here!! Some people will simply be listening to The Podcastle while sitting at their desktops, or laptops, or staring blankly at their smart phones. I've had a hunt around the internet and come up with a few super clever ideas podcasters have used to add some pazazz! (I apologize for my use of pazazz)
Animation:
I've seen a bucket-load of examples on YouTube of producer and fan animated podcasts. The Ricky Gervais Show is an awesome example of this. Started off as an audio only podcast, and then was animated for HBO in the States and Channel 4 in the UK.
I've seen a similar thing done with clips of Hollywood Babble-On (Kevin Smith and Ralph Garman's celeb news /Liam Neeson dick jokes podcast) on YouTube. I'm not sure if this was animated in house, or if it's just incredibly elaborate fan-art.
Unless one of the lords, is actually the defrosted Walt Disney, I'm not sure animating the cast is going to be possible, but I've seen a whole bunch of other (probably simpler) visual techniques.
Vidcast:
According to my gamer brother Day[9] is some kind of pro-gamer demi-god with whole lot of Korean fans... obvisously he's tapped a niche market, that's probably not going to be ours, but his podcast is super visual. That's because it's actually a vidcast. There's no fancy camera work, editing or set he just films himself talking into his computer.
Picture Time:
So it's pretty low tech, but there is also the option of adding still images to our podcast and uploading it onto YouTube. Rob (you know, the one with the podcast) has a pretty good, if woefully uninteresting example of this.
Comment away Lords.
Well how about we incorporate this into investigating the medium. Do people want/need visuals to engage with the ideas. We would be investigating if our podcast be more successful if we incorporated animations?
ReplyDeleteYeah very important comparison to make, particularly with regards to our comparison to other mediums. To me, however, a vidcast/things like what they did with the Ricky Gervais Show are entirely different media to a Podcast. I guess it's all just a matter of definition and interpretation. But either way, definitely something we should be considering when evaluating the medium.
ReplyDeleteI've always thought a vidcast and a podcast are two completely different mediums but often aim to achieve the same thing, the 'cast' part. Good point about whether or not an audience would "need" visuals. Definitely something to think about. I guess what I was mainly addressing was the fact that all of those links to different podcasts take you to a website and then the website serves a few purposes: a place of publication, a visual background to complement the audio, not that you would stare at the screen for long but it does make an impression and also to present an image of the podcast, a teaser or a vibe. Having said this, this is the only way I have accessed podcasts in the past, I've never used itunes to do so, do either of you use itunes exclusively to download podcasts?
ReplyDeleteYeah I know what you're saying. The website is an important part of drawing listeners in and providing supplementary material, however, to me, the podcast itself is a standalone medium that should be able to hold up as a purely audio piece of work. I guess this is the difference between podcasts and vidcasts etc... whilst they are both 'casts' and in that respect they do have similar aims (just like any media I suppose), the use of video still makes them entirely different prospects, which is why I think it would be a good comparison. I think some messages translate better over podcasts and some better over vidcasts.
ReplyDeleteFor us, obviously our feature will be a website section of sorts, so we will definitely need to think a lot about visuals and other pretty things to help appeal to an online audience. I just think as far as a podcast goes, it is somewhat defined by being audio based.
I was reading Lucy's post about McLuhan and his notion of "medium is the message". Changing up our style of podcast will definitely test this notion, because largely our content will be consistently based on "podcasting". I personally think the vidcast won't be as popular as the straight audio because video on informative content doesn't allow multi-tasking, whereas with the audio you could just listen to it as you do something else. Thoughts?
ReplyDeleteI tend to disagree SnoopBloog...
ReplyDeleteJust drawing on my personal consumer experience here, but when I engage with a text, I like to be all in (sorry to reference Adidas here). I like to commit to it fully. None of this 'Oh I'll just do my homework while I listen to the radio' or 'I'll just go on facebook while I watch this movie' rubbish. I like a bit of commitment, otherwise my performance/engagement with both mediums will just be half-arsed.
That's why I'd engage better with the vidcast, give it my all, and then move on, or else I'd just get too distracted! I know people from our generation have short attention spans and should be able to multi-task.... I don't know, what do you guys think?